


The nights were cold but we kept them hot

by stillahavsvinden



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, First Meetings, M/M, Melancholy, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-Canon, Pre-War, Sex, Young Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:56:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23479579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillahavsvinden/pseuds/stillahavsvinden
Summary: He was an enchantment, a dream. One that Sco might wake up from.or,Blake and Sco meet one innocent summer before the war and fall in love.
Relationships: Tom Blake & William Schofield, Tom Blake/William Schofield
Comments: 7
Kudos: 52





	The nights were cold but we kept them hot

**Author's Note:**

> I took some artistic liberties with the character's ages and timelines to make this make sense.
> 
> I named Sco's wife (or, in this case, fiancée) Virginia because I could swear the box he carries with him has that name written on it.

It was Blake’s seventeenth birthday when Sco first ran across him. Of course, Sco hadn’t known it at the time, but it was a remarkable date all the same.

That evening, Sco and Virginia had come out of the King’s Arms after a secret celebration of the anniversary of their engagement. Sco had been anxious all evening, because he was well aware of the fact that Virginia would have liked to make it official and change their marital status already. Nevertheless, their celebration had passed without a hitch, and no complaints from Virginia.

It was things like that that made Sco so incredibly fond of her. She was a thousand times too good for him, but seeing as she had chosen him, he tried to repay her the best he could.

So there they were, standing outside the pub, bracing themselves for the homeward journey, hanging about amidst all the other revellers. The summer night smelled sweet, and Virginia looked beautiful.

Suddenly an exclamation cut through all the other noise. At first, it seemed like any other bout of rowdiness, with raised male voices, intoxicated shoves and slaps – but Sco had sensed a ripple of danger in the air.

“Hey!”

“Will? Where are you going?” Virginia asked nervously.

“Meet you at home, love. Go ahead, I’ll catch up.”

The first punch was thrown, and Sco saw somebody dropping to the cobbled street.

“Hey!” Sco yelled again, at the top of his lungs. It distracted the brawlers just enough for him to intervene.

The person on the ground was very young. His eyes were big and cheeks chubby. His face was furrowed with pain and fury.

“No, wait, WAIT!”

Before anyone knew what had happened, the boy had lunged at his attacker’s legs – the man fell flat on his back.

“That’s enough!” Sco shouted, now more scared for the boy than he had been a second ago.

Breathing hard, the boy readied himself for a punch, but couldn’t do anything before Sco had seized him by the scruff of his neck. He dragged the boy away from the scene just in time. The boy trembled in his grasp as he walked him round the corner, onto a dark alley behind the pub.

“What was all that about?” Sco asked.

The boy was panting hard, his lower lip trembling slightly, eyes straying back to where the two of them had just come from.

“Bastards!”

He licked his lower lip, on which there was now a drop of blood.

Sco dug into his pocket and produced a hankie.

“Cheers.” The boy took it, eyes briefly meeting Sco’s. Then he looked again, as if taking the first proper look at his rescuer… “Don’t I know you?”

Sco gave an involuntary chuckle. “Well, that depends.”

“I’ve seen you at church, haven’t I?”

“Most likely. We go there every Sunday.”

But the boy was no longer paying attention. He heaved a deep sigh and leaned his head on his hand.

Sco made his decision then. “I can’t leave you here. Come, up you get.”

He helped the boy to his feet.

“Where are you taking me, mister...?”

“Schofield. Just call me Sco, all of my friends do. I’m taking you home. Where do you live?”

He felt the boy freeze in his arms. “I don’t want to go home. My mum will kill me if she sees me looking like this.”

Sco felt his heart softening. “I’ll take you to my house. You can tidy yourself up there.”

The boy no longer resisted.

  
  


* * *

On the way home, Sco was painfully aware of how awkward and inconvenient the situation was – instead of strolling home arm in arm with his fiancée, he was walking home with a drunken boy. It was lucky that Virginia was never petty; she would understand.

They wandered down the dark streets until they came to the vine-covered house Sco and Virginia called their home. The windows were glowing with faint light from the lamps. Virginia was waiting for them. Him. Well, she would be – it was their anniversary, after all, and they had unfinished business before going to sleep that night.

Sco showed the boy in through the unlocked front door and into the dark hall.

“The bathroom’s upstairs,” he instructed.

The boy nodded a quick thanks, refusing to meet Sco’s eye, and climbed up the stairs.

With a sigh, Sco took off his jacket.

A movement in the corner of his eye told him that Virginia had come to the hall. She leaned on the wall, arms crossed.

“I’m sorry I brought him here,” said Sco.

“Oh no, don’t be,” said Virginia. “He’s just a boy who needed help. It was an admirable thing you did.” A smile lit up her stern face. “That’s the type of chivalry that women love.” 

Sco’s ears were burning.

There were thuds against the threadbare carpet as their guest came back downstairs. He paused just before the landing, noting that the two owners of the house had regrouped and were staring at him.

“Hello,” Virginia greeted him kindly, and the boy’s big blue eyes flitted to her.

“Ma’am,” he replied after a moment’s hesitation. “Sorry to have bothered you like this.”

“Oh, it’s all right. Are you well now?” Virginia said, ignoring the mistitling.

The boy nodded sheepishly, glancing at Sco. “Thanks for your help. I think I’ll go now.”

Sco let the boy pass. But before he stepped out into the night, Sco said, “I don’t think I know your name.”

“It’s Blake. Thomas Blake.”

* * *

That Sunday, he saw Blake again among the parishioners.

The boy was sitting up front at the church, across the isle from Sco and Virginia, and had evidently come away unscathed from Friday night’s scuffle. Possibly the only thing he’d hurt had been his pride. He briefly caught Sco’s eye right before the service began, and Sco nodded him back.

Sco wasn’t much of a churchgoer, but it was a habit he had learned in childhood, one that Virginia encouraged. All the same, he liked the peace of mind it gave him – while the other parishioners sang the usual hymns, Sco would sit still in deep meditation over whatever he had on his mind at the time.

However, this time his gaze strayed across the aisle, to the brown-haired boy singing _All Things Bright and Beautiful_. Next to the boy was another dark-haired man, a little older, and Sco wondered if the man was Blake’s brother.

He saw them together in front of the church after the service. Sco was hesitant to go and talk to them, but then Blake – the younger of them – spotted him and pointed him out to the older man, who turned to Sco with an expression of delighted surprise.

The man walked up to him and held out his hand. “Mr. Schofield, isn’t it?” 

“Please, call me Will,” Sco answered, taking the hand.

“Will,” the older Blake repeated, smiling. “I’m Joseph.” Then he lowered his voice and said, “I heard you saved our Tom from a spot of trouble.”

He turned to his little brother, whose chubby cheeks flushed from the shameful memory.

“Oh, it was nothing. Anyone would have done the same, I’m sure,” Sco replied.

“Just remember, Tom, that you won’t always have someone like Will here to get you out of trouble,” Joseph Blake said warmly, wagging a finger at his brother.

Just then, Virginia came out with a group of women, their laughter ringing out in the yard.

“Oh, Will, I was wondering where you’d got to,” she said, breaking away from the crowd. “Oh, hello! Thomas, wasn’t it?”

The younger Blake nodded a quick hello, but the older Blake stepped up.

“You must be Mrs. Schofield.”

Virginia glanced at Sco before smiling at Joseph Blake. “Fiancée, for now.”

Joseph Blake looked at Sco in mild surprise. “Well, I hope this young man will see sense soon. You two make a handsome pair.”

Sco felt hot under his Sunday best. He didn’t have to look to know that Thomas Blake’s eyes were on him.

He made a quick excuse and left Virginia and Joseph chatting while he made his way to the nearby garden. There, he lit a cigarette.

Soon, he heard soft steps behind him in the long grass.

“Got one for me too?”

The boy was looking at him a little sheepishly.

Sco handed Blake a cigarette and lit it behind a cupped hand. They blew smoke towards the graves.

“You sing well,” Sco said after a minute.

The boy’s stern face broke into a smile. “You’re not the first one to tell me that.”

Sco smiled back. “Well, it deserves to be said.”

Blake walked on, down the lawn. By the graveyard wall grew an apple tree, the apples just a shade too pale to be plucked and therefore probably spared from pilferers.

The boy closed his palm around one and gave it a twist. It came off, and the boy bit into it.

“Hmm.”

The shrug of his shoulders told Sco that the taste wasn’t so bad.

Plucking another apple, Blake turned to him.

“Care for an apple?”

Sco burst out laughing at the sudden offer. In the end, however, he followed the boy down to the tree.

“Well, since you’re offering…”

He took the apple, fingers brushing Blake’s. The apple was warm from his body heat.

It tasted somewhat bitter still, but Sco was hungry by now, and the tart taste washed away the lingering tobacco smoke on his tongue.

“Will?”

He turned around to see Virginia waving at him. “Come! We’ve still got to go to the bakery!”

“Yes, love!” he called back over his shoulder.

“Will I see you around?” asked Blake, squinting in the sunlight.

Something about the eagerness and abruptness of the boy’s question made Sco’s heart swell. After that night in the pub, he had expected them to go their separate ways, his good deed over and done with. But the boy actually seemed to enjoy his company.

“Sure. You could pop around for tea sometimes. Though I’ll have to ask Ginny first,” he added with a grin.

Blake’s face brightened, and a faint flush rose to his round cheeks.

The sight reminded Sco of apples, he thought to himself as he went up the hill to his fiancée.

* * *

Contrary to what Sco had expected, he didn’t see Blake again for some time. He had found himself immediately planning what to offer, wondering what the boy would think of their home, the house that to the naked eye belonged much more to Virginia than it did Sco. But he had his desk by the window, overlooking the High Street, and that was enough.

He had spent the entire Sunday morning with butterflies in his stomach, wondering how to best invite Blake over – but when they got to the church, he noticed to his displeasure that the boy wasn’t there. Sco sat silently through the service again, letting others do the singing and praying.

This time, however, his quietness continued after the service. Upon their walk home through the town, Virginia remarked on it.

“Oh, that?” Sco said. “I think I’ve got a lot on my mind. What with the teaching, you know.”

“You’ll be all right tonight, won’t you?” she asked.

Sco gave her a puzzled look.

“I’m going to Margot’s tonight, remember?”

“Oh, that! Of course,” replied Sco quickly, although the fact had entirely slipped from his mind. “Go ahead, love. I’ll be fine. Might get some work done while you’re away.”

Virginia responded to his smirk with a kiss on his cheek, and Sco had soon forgotten about the boy with brown curls.

Later that day she took her leave, and Sco wished her a nice evening. Left alone, Sco decided to spent his evening at his desk, correcting his pupils’ exams. He made some headway in those couple of hours that he worked, but the sweet summer night outside his window tempted him away in the end.

To make the most of the last lingering light, he got up, stretched, and went down to the garden behind their house. The orange glow in the horizon filtered through the shrubbery. He watched the cloud of insects flitting about in the air, the birds cawing in the trees beyond their garden wall, and thought to himself that he needed nothing more. This was the home he had built with Virginia.

The deepening darkness would still be pleasantly warm for an hour or so. Sco took off his shoes and sank his soles into the soft grass.

He must have dozed off, for the next thing Sco heard was the doorbell ringing in the house. He was lying flat on his back on the porch – the sun had set, and the oncoming chill of the evening had set in his joints and muscles.

“Coming!” Sco called into the house and clambered to his feet.

He wondered who it could be this late. Not Virginia, she had the key. Possibly the lady next door whose cat had run off again.

He didn’t expect to see the boy standing there – and yet when he did, it seemed like a thing that had always supposed to happen.

“Blake!”

A toothy grin spread on the boy’s face, illuminating it and Sco’s doorstep.

“Thought I’d drop by for that tea now,” Blake said.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” replied Sco, suddenly aware of his bare feet and what must have been a generally unkempt appearance. He noticed that in his hand, the boy was holding a small bouquet of dandelions.

“Flowers for the missus” Blake explained.

“Thank you. I’ll take them, Virginia isn’t at home,” Sco said, accepting the bouquet with a self-conscious chuckle. There was a first time for everything, including accepting flowers from another man. Once again, Sco was startled to feel Blake’s warmth on the stalks as his hand closed around them.

“This way,” said Sco and led the way into their tiny sitting room.

He found a small bowl for the flowers and placed it on the windowsill. Then, he lit up some lamps and put the kettle on, fussing between the sink, stove and table. He turned around, expecting to see Blake waiting in the sitting room – but the boy was nowhere to be seen.

“Blake? Want something with the tea?” he called tentatively into the house.

The answer came from the adjacent room: “Biscuits would be nice.”

Sco followed the voice, wincing slightly as he found the boy standing by his desk, silhouetted against the window.

The boy turned to him, grinning. “Some job you got.”

Sco was glad it was dark, for he blushed. “Not the most exciting job in the world, teaching,” he conceded.

“Don’t much care for school meself,” said Blake, picking up one of the exam papers for perusal. “I got told off by my German teacher last week. Can’t remember all the bloody inflections.”

Sco gave a soft laugh. “Come, tea should be ready.”

Sco fussed some more with the teacups and the kettle, wishing dearly he spent more time in the kitchen because then he would know where everything was.

Just as he had managed to get everything on the table, Blake said, “Can’t we go outside?” nodding towards the garden.

“We don’t have chairs there.”

“I don’t mind.”

Sco gave a small sigh of defeat, but acquiesced.

With just a sliver of golden light in the horizon, the night was filled with birdsong, children’s laughter from the street, and the barking of a dog.

They sat down on the blanket on which Sco had slept mere minutes ago.

“Have you kept out of trouble? Apart from your German classes,” Sco asked the boy, just to make conversation while they sipped at their tea.

The boy smiled against the rim of his teacup. “Spoken like a true teacher.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” replied Sco. “Sometimes people care about you without being obliged.”

The boy seemed to find this funny. He stared ahead, into the darkness of the garden.

Something about the sight made Sco feel sentimental – he felt a strange attachment to this boy, and wondered why that was. Was it pity, or protectiveness? There was a shade of something familiar about the feeling. Something he felt for Virginia too.

Suddenly Blake got up.

“Where are you going?”

Blake strode over to the corner of the house and picked up something. It was too dark for Sco to see what it was, but then he heard the familiar thump. A football came flying through the air, falling right at his feet.

“Fancy a game, professor?” asked Blake.

Sco gave a baffled laugh, but before he knew it, he was on his feet and running after the boy as he dribbled the ball in circles around the lawn.

Sco had thought about going easy on him, but a sudden surge of competitiveness gripped him. He rolled up his sleeves and sprang after the boy, trying to capture the ball.

A moment later, they were both panting and glowing with sweat.

“All right, that’s it!” cried Sco. “It’s getting late. We’ve got to quit before the neighbours start complaining.”

He looked over the wall and saw a light in his neighbour’s window.

“Admit it, you just couldn’t stand losing!” panted Blake.

With an exhausted laugh, Sco reached out and ruffled the boy’s head before taking the ball away from him.

“Do that again.”

Smile still lingering on his face, Sco asked, “Do what?”

He was surprised to see Blake not laughing or smiling. On the contrary – something about his expression made Sco’s spine tingle.

Changing the subject, the boy asked, “You got a fag?”

For a moment, Sco considered telling the boy that it was late and it was better if he went home now – but still he gave him a cigarette, and lit one himself.

They sat down on the lawn to smoke, still breathing hard from all the exertion. Blake smelled of fresh sweat, outdoors and night air as he sat next to Sco.

Clearing his throat, Sco asked him again, “What did you want me to do?”

The boy looked at him with his big blue eyes, cigarette smouldering between his fingers, and Sco realised that he might not want to know the answer. He found it difficult to breathe all of a sudden.

“It’s just… you’re really handsome, is all,” Blake said.

Sco stared ahead of himself, feeling very numb and very much alive. His hand was shaking as he brought the cigarette to his lips.

“Was it rude of me to say that?” asked the boy after a minute, when Sco failed to respond.

“Oh, no,” Sco coughed. “No. It was a very kind thing to say. It’s just… I don’t often get called that. Not by men, anyway.” He trailed off, breathless, as if noting the change in the air.

“I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just… I can’t help it,” Blake continued.

Something about his voice made Sco wonder if he was going to cry. It made Sco look away in shame. 

“No, it’s all right,” Sco mumbled mechanically. “It happens. I…”

He knew right there what was going to happen next. A hand came to rest on his cheek, turning his head around. The boy met his mouth with his own, and the world seemed to fall away from underneath Sco.

Blake pushed him down into the long grass, the weight of the boy’s muscles and the push and pull of his limbs exactly the same as it had been a moment ago when they had played football. Sco had closed his eyes – it was more than he could handle.

Sco numbly registered the fingers working on the buttons of his shirt before dropping down to his lap; a hand pressed between his legs.

There was a brief moment, suspended in time, when Sco wondered how to respond – whether to draw away or press himself closer. He was on the edge of a precipice, where nothing else existed beyond the garden and the young man exploring him with his hand.

Blake’s fingers scrambled to unbutton his shirt.

“No. Wait.” Sco’s hand went on top of Blake’s, stopping him.

The haze of lust had dissipated. He opened his eyes, startled by how dark it was in the world. The boy was staring at him with big blue eyes glimmering in the night.

Blake pulled away, and Sco shivered in the chill of the evening.

“No… Wait!” Sco said again, but for a very different reason. 

He saw the shame in the droop of the boy’s shoulders as he strode to the door.

“Your wife must be here any minute,” said the boy over his shoulder.

“She’s not my wife… Wait!”

“Yeah, why not?” Blake fixed Sco with a hard stare.

His sudden bluntness left Sco temporarily speechless.

“I think it’s time you go, Blake.”

“I was already on me way.”

The door slammed shut, loud enough to set the clocks in the house ringing.

Sco stood there for a moment, frozen immobile. Then, giving himself a shake, he went to wash himself and change into his pyjamas. As Sco looked in the mirror hanging on the bedroom wall, he saw the redness on his cheeks, neck and collarbone. There was a line or two on his chest from where Blake’s nails had nicked his skin. He ran a hand over them, to make them more real – to make himself more real.

The last time he had been kissed by someone other than Virginia, he had been a schoolboy – and in the garden, he had felt like one again.

Slowly, he slipped his hand under the waistband of his pyjamas. He had been hard when Blake had touched him there.

Yet there could be no truth in Blake’s words. Whatever the boy had been suggesting, it was not true. Sco cared for Virginia very deeply – he certainly wasn’t going to break off their engagement because of… _Nevermind_.

For a minute he stood there, wondering what to do. In the end he pulled his hand out of his pyjamas – just in time, because the front door opened and closed, and there was a jangle of keys.

Sco leapt to their bed, pulled the eiderdown over himself and picked up the book from the bedside table.

“Ginny, is that you?”

“Who else?” answered a familiar voice. She had laughter in her voice – remnants of a fun night with friends.

She came to bed with her spirit still high. Sco felt bad for getting his release that night. Her mouth tasted different, and Sco knew it was Blake’s kiss mingling with hers. But Virginia didn’t seem to care – she just wanted her man.

Sco lay awake that night, listening to Virginia’s steady breathing beside him. She had snuggled up to him to keep warm, as the sweat had cooled off her skin and the night had seeped in through the weathered windows. Now her back was turned to him. The bumps of her spine shone in the faint light from the outside.

The sight made him feel protective of her – and the more he cared for her, the bigger his guilt seemed to be.

He had kissed Blake with this mouth.

Then again, it made no sense for him to feel shame over Blake, and not this: he was doing the wrong thing even now, sharing a bed with Virginia, refusing to make an honest woman of her, while he simply took, took and took – with each kiss, caress, each penetration.

But he could make it all right in an instant. He could make it all right by asking her hand in marriage.

He was swept by a terrible sense of guilt.

That pestering voice inside his head now belonged to Blake.

_Why not?_

* * *

There had been a change in the weather. The deepest of the summer was over, and it wouldn’t be long until autumn was truly upon them. Rain bounced off the street below Sco’s window, the patter in the background as Sco wrote notes for his next week’s classes. It had rained two weeks straight, or it at least seemed so.

The constant rain had turned their house cold and the rooms damp, no matter how Sco and Virginia tried to keep the fire in the fireplace. At nights, they could hear the wind as it wheezed in the chimney. Virginia would coil into him as they lay in bed, and he knew it was because she was cold.

Just as this thought passed his mind, Sco heard the creak of the floorboards behind him and saw Virginia there.

“Dinner’s ready.”

“Oh. Thank you. I’ll be there in a minute,” Sco replied, making an effort to smile.

She didn’t smile back; instead, she walked over to him. She wound her arms around him; her head came to rest upon his shoulder.

“You haven’t touched me in three weeks.”

Sco’s shoulders tensed under her arms.

“I haven’t?”

“No.” She tried hard to keep the accusation from her voice, but either way it was implied.

“I’m sorry, I…”

“You’ve been busy? Tired? Cold? So have I,” she replied, kissing Sco’s neck. “Or is it because we’re still not married?”

Sco cleared his throat, trying to find his way out of this mess.

“I’m sorry. I will make it up to you.”

This time, he felt Virginia tensing around him.

He turned his head around to place a kiss on the side of her mouth. She responded, seeking his lips, but there was a faint taste of disappointment – that this was Sco’s idea of compensation. Not a wedding, not a marriage; this. He pulled her on his lap and worked all the layers of cloth out of the way. He gave her what she wanted, there and then.

But by the time Sco reached his climax, the look on her face had changed. She seemed absent, a frown on her beautifully flushed face. 

She climbed off him in an obvious state of abstraction and flipped through the calendar on the desk.

“No, that can’t be right…” she mumbled, heading out of the room without so much as a look at Sco, and he knew better than to ask.

* * *

Sco was reluctant to go to church that Sunday. He didn’t know if he wanted Blake to be there or not. Either way, he hadn’t seen the boy at church for several weeks now – three weeks, in fact. And if Sco were honest with himself, he wasn’t surprised by Blake’s sudden disappearance. In a way, it made it easier for Sco to get over him. Distance had a way of lending clarity. A part of him seemed to have already forgot that Blake even existed. The memory of the boy’s mouth and hands became less real to him by the day.

Perhaps it was this that gave him the shock of a lifetime when he stepped out of the school gates next Friday. Sco had walked a little further down the road when he saw the unmistakable brown curls and the set of shoulders he would have now recognised anywhere.

Next to the boy sat a dog, a Retriever, staring at its master with good-natured eyes. Blake was evidently awaiting someone, standing in front of the butcher’s shop.

Sco had barely noticed that his feet had stopped carrying him when the boy’s gaze landed on him, bringing the whole world to a halt. Like two transfixed animals, they stared at one another, before Sco made a split-second decision to look away instead of looking on.

He turned on his heel and headed off in the opposite direction. Behind him, he heard as the door opened with a tinkle of a bell and a familiar masculine voice began talking.

Sco caught the quick exchange between Tom and Joseph Blake, then the hurried footsteps…

“Sco, wait!”

Pretending as though nothing awkward had happened, Sco fixed a smile on his face and turned.

He almost fell over when the Retriever lunged at him, barking and panting loudly.

“Myrtle, down!”

The dog did as it was told at once, shooting a docile look at its master.

“Good girl…” Blake muttered, the temporary distraction making it easier for him to look Sco in the eye.

Being in the presence of the boy made Sco feel dazed and dream-like. He recognised the feeling from two years ago; from when he had barely known Virginia. When they still used to sneak out at nights.

He wasn’t supposed to feel that way now. But he did, and the only thing he could do about those feelings was to protect Blake from them.

“That where you teach?” Blake asked, nodding over Sco’s shoulder at the red brick building.

“Huh? Oh, yes.”

Blake stared into middle distance, scratching Myrtle’s ear, and the silence was once again heavy upon them.

Sco could tell that the boy had lots to say, but all the words wanted to come out at once, cancelling each other out.

Two young girls Sco knew went to his school walked past them then, smiling at Blake. He made a brief nod of acknowledgement. Sco watched them curiously, trying to work out where the boy would know them. He was made acutely aware of the fact that they were in public – it was one thing to harbour certain feelings under a starry sky in your own back garden, another thing entirely to have them in broad daylight.

“I haven’t seen you at church,” Sco said to fill the silence.

There was a flicker of something agonised in Blake’s eloquent eyes as he glanced at Sco.

“No. I haven’t felt like it.”

“Why not?” Sco asked, concerned. “You sing beautifully. I miss hearing your voice.”

Blake grimaced. “I’m wicked, aren’t I?”

The word came out of the boy’s mouth with blistering clarity.

_Wicked._

It left Sco unsteady on his feet. He wanted to say something, but his brain wasn’t quick enough.

There was a ripple of danger in the air, and he knew he ought to go.

“You doing anything this evening?” the boy asked.

Sco’s heart did a small flip at the words, but as he seized Blake up, he saw no ulterior motive there. Blake just wanted his company; not because Blake would plan on doing anything, but because being with Sco made him happy; and that whatever had happened last time wouldn’t happen again; they had both passed beyond that.

“No, I’m not.”

“You know the hill behind the church? I take Myrtle out there for a walk in the evening. The sunset is beautiful there.”

Sco nodded. “I’ll be there.”

* * *

The town was quiet –it was the lazy hours before sunset.

Sco left the paved road and wandered into a little wood. The church steeple was visible through the trees on his right. The bell started to toll just as Sco made it to the other side of the woods, sending birds flying from the trees.

For a moment he stood still, running an eye over the green hill on which he now stood. The last rays of golden light came slanting down on his left, hitting the grass to a magical effect.

And there, silhouetted in that beam of light, under a tree, sat a hunched creature.

He walked up the sloping lawn under the knobbly apple three, to the bundle of a figure sitting amidst all the green.

“Where’s Myrtle?”

The boy jumped and whipped around.

“Left her home,” he answered, holding Sco’s gaze for a moment.

Perhaps Sco was imagining things, but the look on his face seemed to say, “As did you.”

Heat surged in Sco’s chest, but he forced it down – Blake had never said those words; it was all in Sco’s head. No point getting mad.

The surprise that Sco’s sudden appearance had caused slowly turned into melancholy on Blake’s face. He looked away again, at the view of their hometown spread out beneath them.

There was a twig in his hair.

Sco sat down next to him. The grass was warm; the softness in the air enough to make him miss this summer already. He plucked the twig from Blake’s head. For a while, neither of them was in a hurry to disturb to the peace.

“I could do with a smoke right now,” Blake said finally, eliciting a resigned chuckle from Sco.

He dug into his breast pocket and gave him one.

“Is this why you keep wanting to meet me?” Sco asked by way of a joke, the words just slipping away from him. As soon as he’d said them, he realised he didn’t necessarily want Blake to answer.

The boy gave him a wry smile, striking a match. “I could get fags from my mates as well.”

“Well, that’s comforting,” said Sco. “At least you like me for me.”

A silence fell after Sco’s words. The air was very still. The only sounds were the birds in the trees. They were alone – no human in sight or earshot. Blake stared at him through his dark eyelashes, and it was too much for Sco.

Whatever emotion passed Sco’s face, it didn’t go unnoticed by Blake. There was a palpable change in the air between them. Sco didn’t understand it; couldn’t interpret it. It unsettled him.

Blake’s voice was stifled when he spoke: “How’s Ginny?”

“Oh – she’s good. I think,” Sco murmured.

“You think?” Blake repeated.

Against his better judgement, he found himself confiding in the boy: “She’s been very odd lately. I know she wants me to get a move on and marry her. I think… I think she might be getting tired of me. She wants me to make up my mind.”

He wondered if his confession was too much for the boy. After all, he was only seventeen.

“Why haven’t you?”

Sco looked down at his feet.

“I don’t know! I’m quite happy with her. I’m fond of her. I think I’m going mad sometimes. Any man would marry her. It would be the decent thing to do. Reasonable.”

Blake gave a chuckle, blowing smoke at the setting sun.

“You’re a man of reason, aren’t you, Sco?”

Sco felt heat on his cheeks, and it had nothing to do with the sun.

They watched it set behind the woods, turning the sky above them into a glowing dome. The few wisps of cloud grew dark.

“Tell me, Sco…” Blake said then, the tone of his voice preparing Sco for something.

“Did you feel anything? When I…”

He couldn’t say the words aloud, but he didn’t need to.

Sco held his breath for a minute.

“Forget it,” said Blake quickly, about to clamber to his feet.

“No, wait!” Sco said and grabbed his arm.

Blake dropped down next to him, his young face broken. _He is too young_ , Sco told himself. _Much too young. Seventeen. That’s what he told me. A schoolboy crush, nothing more._

Sco had had his share of those when he’d been that age. But then he had met Virginia, and he’d never been sweet on anyone else.

This boy was no exception – he wasn’t real. He was an enchantment, a dream. One that Sco might wake up from.

In the stillness of the evening, Sco heard him sniffle. A part of him wanted to get mad at the boy, but he couldn’t bring himself to.

“I don’t know what’s happened to me,” the boy said.

The blue of the evening was thickening fast around them. When Sco took Blake’s hand, his fingertips were cool, but the look in Blake’s blue eyes was everything but.

And when Sco shivered, it had nothing to do with the oncoming chill.

He knew he ought to go. He willed himself to move, but he didn’t really want to.

He wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else in the world than under that very apple tree. Not when Blake leaned towards him, his eyes fluttering shut, because kisses were meant to be given blindly, and his body was flooded with familiar desire. The boy’s hand on Sco’s knee could have burned through his skin.

He took Blake’s face gently in his hands and kissed him back, slowly.

Sco’s hand found its way into the boy’s hair just as Blake’s began to map out Sco’s body – inexperienced hands acquainting themselves with somebody else’s body for the first time. Sco wanted to be worth it; worth the honour of being his first.

That night he knew he wouldn’t make him stop.

* * *

The night was full and impenetrable as Sco made his way home, taking the long way, doing what he had to do to go back to normalcy. Back to Virginia.

It was a privilege, to be going home to someone, Sco thought. He had felt like a teenager as he had undressed in the grass, under the stars; now, he felt older than he had when he had woken up in the morning.

It was all right. It was all right, as long as he left it behind. Behind on that hill, under that old tree. And as his home came into view, the upstairs window still flooded with light, he was suddenly very aware of the fragility of it all; of a relationship that for two years had been the end all and be all of his existence.

“Where have you been?” Virginia asked as he got up to the bedroom. She wasn’t angry, but she wasn’t all right either. She was sitting on the bed in her nightgown. Her ams came and embraced him. She embraced him even when he didn’t deserve it. The scent of her hair was in his nose; her breasts were soft against his chest.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

She pulled away and splayed her fingers over her belly.

As Sco lifted his gaze from her belly up to her smiling face, he knew for certain.

He hadn’t expected the tears; his, not hers. When? How?

“Probably a month along,” Virginia said. “You look as though you're about to faint.”

The love in her voice made Sco look away – out the window, into the garden. But there’s nothing to see there, of course.

He looked back at Virginia.

Life was here, now.

**Author's Note:**

> I got the idea for this fic about a month ago when I came home after watching 1917 for the umpteenth time, and it kind of snowballed from there. Can't believe it turned into a 6,000-word fic.


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